Now, with props and congrats aside, lets take a look at why the U.S. government, their military, and intelligence communities acted so quickly last week to take Osama out. To be honest, if you're into intelligence and information gathering, leaving Osama alone would have been the best option here due to the complicated nature of the terrorist network he was figurehead of. Why kill an intelligence source when you can monitor it for as long as possible and maybe take out more of the problem? Here's the reason why: *clicky!* About a week ago (April 24, 2011), WikiLeaks came into the picture releasing documents again... this time about Gitmo's detainee's, their documented confessions, and trying to draw skepticism about these confessions as they were obtained under torture -
The memos are signed by the commander of Guantánamo at the time, and describe whether the prisoners in question are regarded as low, medium or high risk. Although they were obviously not conclusive in and of themselves, as final decisions about the disposition of prisoners were taken at a higher level, they represent not only the opinions of JTF-GTMO, but also the Criminal Investigation Task Force, created by the Department of Defense to conduct interrogations in the "War on Terror," and the BSCTs, the behavioral science teams consisting of psychologists who had a major say in the "exploitation" of prisoners in interrogation.
Crucially, the files also contain detailed explanations of the supposed intelligence used to justify the prisoners' detention. For many readers, these will be the most fascinating sections of the documents, as they seem to offer an extraordinary insight into the workings of US intelligence, but although many of the documents appear to promise proof of prisoners' association with al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, extreme caution is required.
The documents draw on the testimony of witnesses -- in most cases, the prisoners' fellow prisoners -- whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.
Source: http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/
So what was in these leaked classified documents? Nothing much, <sarcasm>just the fact that Osama had moved to and was operating somewhere out of Abbottabad or Peshawar Pakistan as of 2008!</sarcasm> (source: here) This means the U.S. intelligence communities KNEW he was in those areas and actively looking for him. In fact, they were even closely monitoring this place in August of 2010. (source: here, read - there were probably feet on the ground collecting intel at this time) That shoots a couple of holes in the theory that these interrogations "are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo." This also helps to explain why the U.S. acted in killing Osama bin Laden somtime in the week prior to May 1, 2011. They were in a race to make sure WikiLeaks April 24, 2011 broadcast didn't send Osama hiding somewhere else.
Congrats now fly out to Wikileaks... congrats for throwing the following on your curriculum vitae - "nearly warned a mass murdering psychopath of impending doom," disrupting an intelligence gathering operation into a radical Muslim group where we probably could have caught/killed more of these mass murdering psycho's, and for forcing the U.S. hand into early action when WE finally had a good chance to get a look into his terrorist organization. I guess when Assange stated WikiLeak's was going have "blood on [its] hands" (source: here) he really meant it. This time, you can rest assured that blood is one of someone who is far from innocent. You can also rest assured that by disrupting what was probably a full scale intelligence gathering operation, you probably got the blood of any further innocent people these terrorists kill on YOUR hands. After all, the U.S. intelligence community had a deeper chance to look into this terrorist group since August of 2010. Again, congrats WikiLeaks. You're starting to remind me of the phrasing from the movie the Watchmen: Who watches the watchmen? Who monitors you for damage assessment when it has the potential to impact innocent lives? Sure, club Gitmo has some issues, but drastic times call for drastic measures.
WikiLeak's drastic measure let some mass murderers escape justice more than likely. As of today, it looks like the Seals recovered some of Osama's computers and flash drives... so we can hope and pray that it is a wealth of intelligence showing which countries aided Osama bin Laden's terror network and where his terrorist buddies are hiding. Until then, U.S. Intelligence, it's time to strengthen up the security to prevent these breaches as this is just another equivalent of cyber-warfare (you can call WikiLeaks the PSYOP version of it). Stuff like this shouldn't have gotten out, and the standard ITSEC and INFO-SEC being employed by our government seems to be failing.
